Paying NYC rents these days means we could all use a little extra money! Even if you’re making $100K a year, your salary only amounts to around $30,362 in Manhattan after taxes and cost of living.
So whether you’ve considered picking up a second job or looking into a new side hustle, we’ve searched the internet high and low, combed through Reddit threads, all to compile a list of the quirkiest, uniquely NYC jobs that actually pay.
Get paid to be a pretend date
In a Reddit thread on the craziest ways to make money in NYC, one user described their odd NYC job experience of posing as someone’s pretend girlfriend. She was hired to go to dinner with a man who had flown in from a different town to meet his bosses and he had been lying to them for a year about having an NYC girlfriend. Apparently the job was “boring” but she got all you could eat sushi and $250 by the end of it.
Upsell stooping finds from New York’s sidewalks
One New Yorker’s trash is most definitely another’s treasure! Besides stooping (the very unique NYC act of finding items on the street and taking them for yourself) to save money on furnishing your apartment, you can also use your finds to generate some extra cash. From antique chairs to armoire’s in perfect condition, who knows what people will pay on Facebook Marketplace and other selling channels for your finds.
Cash in as a professional line sitter
Waiting in line is an NYC inevitable, but while everyone wants those hot tickets or launches, few want to queue up themselves. That’s where you come in! You can become a professional line sitter and get paid to hold people’s spots in line. Same Ol Line Dudes is a known company offering this service for a $50 minimum for two hours, and they add $25 for every additional hour. They wait in lines for everything from restaurants to meet and greets and even Hamilton tickets.
Win big by eating the most hot dogs at Coney Island competitions
This year’s Coney Island’s Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest had a prize pool of $40,000. All you had to do to win some of the money was to place first, second or third in your division. With one year to train starting now, you could be the next champion in 2026!
Car sitting for strangers
Earlier this year, a 29-year old woman named Sydney Charlet went viral for getting paid to sit in peoples’ cars during street sweeping. Essentially, drivers will message her business line with their location and vehicle details and she’ll grab the car keys from a building’s doorman or described location. If this sounds interesting to you, she’s actually looking to hire a team! Find her on TikTok.
Pose nude for artists across NYC
Art schools and studios are often looking for figure models to pose nude for a classroom of aspiring artists. If you’re comfortable stripping down to your birthday suit in the name of art, this could be a great way to make some extra money. Of course, artists also need their fair share of portrait models (typically permitted to keep their clothes on) if that’s more your speed. According to Reddit threads, interested models can reach out to figurative artists or various schools to express interest, or even check Craigslist.
Rat farmer for NYU labs
Although most of the aforementioned jobs can be done by pretty much anyone, this specific role has some serious qualifications. The role in essence deals with breeding rats for research purposes. A Reddit user made sure to note that you must have prior work experience in a research environment to effectively “breed and maintain the rats for a lab/institution because the entirety of [a rat farmer’s] work depends on the viability and maintenance of a colony sometimes.”
